upgrade W7 to W8.1 free

I'm helping a friend with an old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5248. It has W7 Home OS. I upgraded it to W10, even though Toshiba says it won't work on W10. They are right. The first item I noticed is that the WiFi didn't work on W10. I tried loading a driver from Toshiba for W8.1 WiFi. It still didn't work. I reinstalled W7 from an Image Backup. Now I'm trying to go from W7 to W8.1. It asks for Product Key. I inserted the W7 Product Key listed on the laptop; MS didn't accept it. Any other thoughts to load W8.1 at no charge? Thanks.

It seems unusual to me that Microsoft will allow a “no charge” upgrade from W7 to W10, but require a new license to upgrade from w7 to w8.1. I guess they don’t realize that some devices will not work properly on W10. I’ll tell my friend that it’s time for a new computer.

Toshiba Satellite L755-S5248 Notebook PC (support site)

It originally came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and has an Atheros or Intel or Realtek wireless device.

If its built-in wireless device won't work with Windows 10, your easiest solution is to purchase an external USB wireless adapter which supports Windows 10.

If you decide to do a "clean" re-install of Windows 10 Home 64-bit, it should automatically activate after the re-install is finished and you have a working internet connection.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, W10 loaded just fine, never asked for Product Code. I never thought to look for "Activated" on the system report. So I believe it was activated with the W7 that was on the hard drive.
I will mention to the owner about a USB WiFi device.
Best Regards!

There is no free "upgrade" from win 7 to win 8.

There are so many people moving back to win 7, why does your friend want to downgrade to win 10?
Win 7 is still the best OS as it is solid stable, (and you can't say the same for win 10).

gopcs said:

I'm helping a friend with an old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5248. It has W7 Home OS. I upgraded it to W10, even though Toshiba says it won't work on W10. They are right. The first item I noticed is that the WiFi didn't work on W10....

The never was a free upgrade from W7 to W8, so there won't be one now.

My very similar Toshiba L750 got the upgrade to W10 in 2015 and is now on the latest 20H2 version. It's Atheros WiFi works fine with the drivers supplied by MS, as does everything else. When an OEM says a model isn't supported for W10 it means it hasn't been tested and is too old for them to bother supporting it, not that it definitely won't work. Mine's not supposed to be supported for W10 either.

The WiFi card is an easily replaced standard module, used cards can be found on eBay. Replacing the card with one that works in W10 would be a neater solution than a USB WiFi device.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...heros&_sacat=0
.

TechnoMage2016 said:

Sorry Bree!
"There never was a free upgrade from W7 to W8, so there won't be one now."

Maybe not in the UK, but then I'm not in the UK, and I just did it, right here on this PC that I'm typing on now.
HOW, you may ask?
It was really quite simple, for an old PC tech, of over 40 years.

I just backed up all my data.
Put in my USB Flash Drive with Windows 8.1/Pro/64 on it,
Booted up to the FD, and let the Windows Installer take over, format the HD and install Windows 8.1/Pro/64.
Then I copied all my data files back to the new Installation. In less than four hours, the job was complete.

OH, and it didn't cost me a dime! Although a few electrons were inconvenienced in the process.

Bill Gates might not approve, but then, I don't work for Bill Gates. Do you?


PS: I could not install Win 7 on this PC without having to refer to the Driver Disk that came with my Gigabyte Motherboard. Win 7 has a very poor driver pack.

However when Installing Windows 8.1, I did not have to install any drivers at all, not for the audio,Lan or video. Win 8.1 took care of that, all by itself. (just like Windows 10 would)

Please explain: "Although a few electrons were inconvenienced in the process."
And how did it activate?

If you really want to install Windows 8.1 on your computer without activation, your best bet would be to use DISM and just use the command line to install Windows using your Windows 8.1 installation media.

There is no trial and what I mean by that is Windows 8.1 will work just fine except the Personalization menu in
the Settings app won't work without activation.

And you will get an annoying full screen activation prompt too like this:



However everything else about Windows 8.1 is totally fine!

However you will have to mess around with DISM and the command prompt on your installation media like I said earlier.

Hope this helps you!

You could try making a partition big enough to store your data, back it up with Easy Transfer, install 8.1 on your Windows drive, then restore your data with Windows Easy Transfer on 8.1.